Plans for new shops and foodcourt at Christchurch's Northlands Mall

Friday, 22 September 2017

A new foodcourt and seating areas for diners will be added at the southern end of Northlands mall.

Christchurch's Northlands Mall is planning to embark on another extension.

The mall, the city's second biggest, has resource consent from the Christchurch City Council to add more stores, extend the mall across existing car parking, build a new foodcourt and outdoor seating area, add a mezzanine level, and do strengthening work.

New stores will extend part of the mall's frontage onto Main North Rd.

Its building consent application for the project is being considered by the council now.

Chris Gudgeon – chief executive of Kiwi Income Property Trust, which owns the mall – said the project was still in the planning stages and details and timeframes were not confirmed.

The expansion will result in some car parks being lost.

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Drawings for the project show it would extend part of the mall towards Main North Rd. This would create space for two large stores – each between 1000 square metres and 1500sqm – plus some smaller stores. There would also be a new entranceway in this part of the mall.

At the southern end of the mall, a new foodcourt would be built with food outlets surrounding raised seating to replace the existing foodcourt. The new mezzanine floor with extra shops would be added at this end.

Facing Langdons Rd, an existing car parking area would be removed and replaced with a 'winter garden' style dining conservatory, outdoor seating with a retractable roof, and a covered outdoor area for the existing Lone Star restaurant.

The alterations would cost the mall 130 car parks. To partly compensate, an extra 40 spaces could be added to an existing park opposite the corner of Sisson Dr and Sawyers Arms Rd.

The plans replace earlier ones, approved by the council in 2014 but never carried out, which would have built a new Farmers store on the Main North Rd boundary and left the foodcourt and Langdons Rd end of the mall untouched.

Northlands was last refurbished in 2012 after the earthquakes. It has 121 tenants, including The Warehouse, Farmers, Hoyts cinema, and Countdown and Pak'nSave supermarkets. There is multi-level parking for 1750 cars.

The mall recorded sales of close to $300 million in the past year and is valued at $448.5m.

It is the second largest mall in Christchurch and the South Island, behind Westfield Riccarton.